


One less person

by Tea_Queen_2112



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Prompt Fic, Psychological Trauma, Ramsay is his own warning, Set during 7x05, Sever feelings of regret, Theon having a nightmare, droughtjoy2017, mentions of torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-20
Updated: 2017-08-20
Packaged: 2018-12-17 19:02:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11857722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tea_Queen_2112/pseuds/Tea_Queen_2112
Summary: While the others have been away fighting battles, capturing wights and riding dragons Theon has been catching up on rest in Dragonstone. Unfortunately for him his dreams aren't something he can't escape and he is haunted by the demons of his past. His body may be resting but his mind is not.Prompt 6 of Droughtjoy 2017





	One less person

The exhaustion had taken its toll Theon Greyjoy

First there had been the naval battle with his uncle and that both emotionally and physically drained him. Secondly there had been another physical challenge in almost having his lungs fill up with the salty sea water. Thirdly and finally there was another mental challenge in the iron born rescuing him yet scolding him for not trying hard enough. After everything it was amazing how his heart didn’t just give up. 

So when he was back at Dragonstone it was no surprise that when he got everything sorted with the remain iron born soldiers he went to find a room he could lay down and rest his tired eyes. Thankfully he had been assigned a room before she had left and he could have some privacy. It wasn't a big room and if he had to make an educated guess he would say that it was probably a wet nurses room or some sort of handmaids. He didn't mind though. Having a bed was better then nothing at all. 

Theon pulled the small cloth blanket over him. He always had to be so careful for fear if it rubbing against one of his wounds and causing him to be uncomfortable as he slept.  
Yara had also been there anytime he wanted to fall asleep. She found it annoying but she could also see that he needed it if he was going to get any better so she stayed by his side during the night. Now there was only an empty chair beside him, he also mistook her figure being there for a second. 

Once he was able to fall into a slumber it wasn’t pleasant however. 

When be was dreaming he felt like he was reliving his one moment of weakness. The air had grown heavy with smoke and there were corpses littering the deck of the sinking ships. Only when Theon looked around something was defiantly off. With his head raised forward he looked around and there was no sign of the other Greyjoy. In fact there didn’t seem to be any more of his uncles men anywhere in sight. 

His focus was then drawn to a shadow that was taking form in Euron’s place. Theon assumed that it was going to be his uncle taunting him saying how he was a ‘cockless’ coward. Oh how wrong was he. There was someone worse than Euron standing where he stood. It was the one person who would be his emotional destruction.

The man was a little shorter of Euron’s height and he wore more refined clothing. He wasn’t an iron born, he was a northerner. Not just any random northerner however he was dressed up in a lords clothing. A kings clothing. His hair in brownish red curls and eyes that were somewhat reminiscent of waters of Tarth. 

“Robb...” Theon’s eyes searched for any sign of deception but it seemed like the real thing. Then he noticed the arrows sticking out of various points of his body. It was a horrific sight Theon had been forced to picture many times but none of them had ever been this vivid before. Such details and Robb’s voice sound exactly like it did all those years ago. Guilt was chocking Theon and breathing was becoming near impossible. 

“You betrayed me Theon. Why?” Robbs pale face spoke to him. He stumbled forwards as if the red wedding had happened a couple of seconds ago. The wounds were making his movements slow and stilted. The sounds of his bones crunching and the wood of the arrow shafts could have caused the Greyjoy’s ears to bleed. 

“I-I-I-!” Theon had seen the scenario so many times in his head and planned what to say but now that it had become somewhat of a reality he was absolutely speechless. He came closer and Theon was torn between running to him and dropping to his knees begging Robb to kill him and running away in terror from the undead Stark. 

“This happened because of you!” He yelled at he pulled one of the bloodied arrows out of his shoulder and he crushed it in his hand and throwing the broken arrow at Theon. It fell before his feet and he didn’t dare try and touch it. Fresh blood still dripped of it and the stench was most foul. Theon emptied the contents of his stomach in nearly a second flat.  
He decided he wanted to run towards Robb but a sudden weight attached themselves to his bony ankles. It didn’t feel like chains, he knew all too well what those felt like thanks to his previous master and the sensation on his foot was like a hand. When he looked down it simply wasn’t like a hand, it was am actual hand. 

He hadn’t thought about the two farm boys in a long time but here they were keeping his held in the one spot. And of course because it was Theon’s dream it had to torment then so it wasn’t the boys fresh young faces before the fire. It was their charred corpses instead and they were still screaming. Screaming for Theon’s men to stop and how they had done nothing wrong. Theon tried to shake off the weight but they became heavier the more he tried to get away. The more he avoided the harder it became. 

When they did eventually allow him to turn his body he saw another figure take the place of the brother that he had once betrayed. This time it was a more feminine figure. Instead of his brother in arms it was his actual blood sister. One more person he had betrayed. Yara was looking worse than the hallucination of Robb and that was saying a lot. Her neck looked like that of a Cheshire cat smile. Wide open. A blade had clearly been used to slice it right open. It wasn’t a clean wound either. It was a messy one and from the side markings it had been done repeatedly. 

She spoke. “Theon. Baby brother. You’re a bloody coward. I knew you should have slit your wrists back in that Volantis whore house. What kind of brother leaves his sister in the hands of a psychopath?!” Theon’s sobbing had reached uncharted levels by this time. Robb had destroyed him on one level but this was completely different. He knew that she was right. She would be safe had he not been a coward and run. Then again he didn’t see what else he could have done in that situation. If he ran Yara would be dead if he stayed the both of them would be captured or worse. No matter what he would be a coward. Much like the rest of his life he couldn’t see any other alternative. 

Yara came closer towards him and like with Robb he did try to move away. He forced himself to look anywhere else but one of the farm boys’ charred black hands forced him to take watch. She started to gurgle the blood as her speech slowly disintegrated into a bunch of liquid sounding noises. A hint of pleading from her was like salt being rubbed into his wounds which coincidently Ramsay had tried at one point. 

Then in a split second the sound suddenly stopped and he thought that the torment was finally over. Just like with Robb she disappeared however he knew that it wasn’t over yet. If he had faced the first two there was always one left after. There was always one person who stalked his mind on a daily basis. The man who was always haunting Theon whether he was awake or simply dreaming. He was always there no matter what. 

There was one last person who had to speak.

“You impressed me Reek. I can’t believe you betrayed your own sister like that. And this time I didn’t even have to be there to scare it into you. You did it yourself.” Ramsay laughed as he came close to Theon and did a small walk around him to prove who was in control. Theon many have struggled to get away from the other ones but form Ramsay he didn’t dare to move a single muscle for fear of any pain it might bring.

This was the worst. Yara and Robb may have left him feeling unbearable amounts of guilt but Ramsay left him feeling devoid of everything. Only fear would remain in his shell.  
Ramsay came closer than either Robb or Yara had dared go and Ramsay’s hands worked his way all around Theon’s body. Even though he was wearing a shirt and a tunic Ramsay was still able to perfectly trace over every scar and wound he had ever given to him. Theon’s panic crept in and he struggled for his life. 

The predatory nature of their relationship all flooded back to him. Theon had become so fixated on Ramsay he almost forgot that they were on the burning ship and instead back at one of the rooms in Winterfell. 

Ramsay’s callous hand grabbed Theon by the chin and came in ever so close to his face. “You’re going to betray everyone you care about until your dying day. The only person you will never betray is me.” He spoke softly but it got the point across all too poignantly. 

Ramsay went in to hit him in the face with his sadistic smile just like the old days.

 _*whack!*_  
Reality. He was back in reality but it didn’t feel like it. 

He woke with a groggy feeling swarming his head. When his eyes had properly opened he found himself staring at the stone floor and a small pool of blood around his nose. He groaned as he realised his dream had caused him to fall out of his bed. He pressed a hand against it to try and stop it from bleeding out anymore. Due to Ramsay it seemed his body had grown use to healing quickly and within a matter of minutes the bleeding had stopped. 

He took a moment to get himself back on his feet despite the crippling guilt and tossed the blanket back onto the straw filled mattress. He thought he would have been alone for the morning but then he heard a knocking on the door. 

“Lord Greyjoy?” He heard a timid voice from behind the starting to rot away wood. 

A rather pretty girl poked her head in through the door. Theon was so disoriented he didn’t recognise Missande at first. After dreams like this it took him a while to get back to reality. Yara was always there to help him get to that stage a lot quicker but since she was elsewhere he was still trying to make heads or tails of what was real and what wasn’t. “I’m fine.” He said automatically. It was always his response when anyone asked him. This was the furthest he had been from okay since jumping off the Winterfell wall.

“I was asked to check up on you Lord Greyjoy. You have been asleep for almost a full two days.”

 _“A full two days?”_ Theon thought. He knew that he was exhausted but he didn’t think he would be out of commission for that long. He began to wonder what the Iron Born had been doing while he was gone. A part of him hoped that they had waited for him but some parts of him were doubtful of that. 

“...Fine...thank you. Is our Queen back yet?” Theon asked. It was a bit of a blur but he remembered that as Jon threatened him he told him that Daenerys had gone south in a hope that she would burn the Lannister soldiers alive and capture resources. Well Jon hadn’t exactly put it like that but that was what he had meant.

“She’s is still in the south at the moment but she is due home soon.” Missande said clearly not looking at his eyes but rather at the scars all over his body. It was clear that with her past as a slave she had seen people whipped before but he doubted that anyone living has seen extreme scaring such as his. 

“Thank you Missande. Please tell me when she arrives.” He didn’t mean for it to sound so harsh but he couldn’t help it with everything that had happened. He stared her down but her eyes were still looking at his abdomen. 

“Very well.” She was quick to get out of there and he was grateful for it. He once again pulled up the blanket all around himself and tried to put the dream behind him. During the conversation it had all but faded during the conversation as most dreams did but the vibrancy of it still left the lingering feeling of dread in his soul and in his stomach. The sooner Daenerys got back the sooner he could get help in getting Yara back. 

The sooner there would be one less person in his Nightmares.

**Author's Note:**

> Hiya, I hope you enjoyed my entry becuase I sure as hell enjoyed writing it and if you want you can find me at Deusexmachinathings on tumblr. Feedback is always responded to and criticism is always helpful to me.


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